


I Know It's Over - Still I Cling

by wrong_century



Series: We Die Only Once, And Forever Such A Long Time [3]
Category: Arthurian Mythology, Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms, Merlin (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, M/M, suggestions of immortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 03:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4988011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrong_century/pseuds/wrong_century
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sir Leon doesn't marry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Know It's Over - Still I Cling

  
Tonight is just like any other night and Leon may be as charming as any other knight - he does his duty, he works hard, but he will not marry. The feast is loud and joyful and full of celebrating, well fed, happy people and Sir Leon may be as funny, clever, entertaining, good looking as any of them, but he will remain alone tonight, just like any other night.  
  
While courtly love and the art of wooing may be all the rage, and the members of Arthur’s court particularly adept, Sir Leon believes in the elusive myth of true love. He sees those around him and has heard tales of others and knows that love is real and the natural way of the world, but he also remembers. Words sighed, late at night in the dark of the battlements, with the power of many hours of drinking behind them.

‘ _Not for such as you and I.’_

Love exists and it is possible, but not for Leon. And not for he that went before.  
  
It is tradition that the King, or perhaps more accurately his Queen, arranges the marriages of his court. Generally, a match that will gain some kind of political advantage. Arthur married for love, for his own convenience and, while Gwen may have grown into her position with an ease that belied her birth, it is more important than before that the marriages of his knights are useful ones.  
  
Out of Arthur’s four closest knights, those that first joined him at his round table, Leon holds seniority and, tradition dictates, that it is he that would be first granted a bride.  
  
With no words, the event is somehow avoided.   
  
Out of all his men, Leon has been closest to Arthur, seen the young Prince through spoilt childhood, awkward adolescence and grown into himself and his Kingship. Arthur respects Leon more than almost anyone and would only see him happy. It is apparent that the joy of his youth cannot be recaptured and Arthur will not force the man into something he so clearly does not desire.   
  
Gwen has known Sir Leon even longer, grown up beside him in his mother’s home before he was knighted and any thought of the Prince had even crossed her mind, an older brother more reliable than the wilder, adventurous Elyan, and much beloved. Her knowledge of Arthur’s chief knight is deep and she has seen his heart break and not recover, and knows it is unlikely he ever will.  
  
It is Elyan who is hand fasted first, in the end. As brother to the Queen he has become a far more desirable match than the son of a blacksmith could expect to be, but he is forced into nothing and is granted the great fortune of caring for his bride.

With a sense of inevitability, the others follow soon after; it is rare that they let one of their number strike out on their own in any field.   
  
Even Gwaine, eventually, is knocked from his firm stance of bachelorhood. Knocked quite literally, the Loathly Lady taking matters into her own hands when Gwaine’s love of speech gets the better of him, approaching from behind with a hefty log in hand. Despite a tempestuous start, and many arguments that follow, their union is a happy one and Leon observes it with as little bitterness as he can manage, glad for his brother’s happiness.  
  
For all his vaunted luck, his near immortality that has been the inspiration behind many a bard’s song or epic ode, Leon is sure he has been slowing dying for years. Or at least, he hasn’t lived for a long time.   
  
He remains though, as constant and reliable as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. Throughout his many trials, the battles and wars and the loss of everyone he loves - from death’s first great blow then it’s progress through the ranks of his friends - Sir Leon remains gentle and kind, beloved by the people as he cares for them and trusted at the right hand of Camelot’s King and Queen.   
  
After years of bloody destruction, he is the last left. Worn by the world and weary of life, but still hale as the years creep over him. An old leg wound that aches in the cold is the only mark he bears from his long years of service.   
  
He fights no longer, the dream of Arthur's Camelot is long since faded and Leon has lost his place in the world with it.  
  
The villagers who live deep in the valley rarely bother him. There are stories that circulate, some wilder than others and none wholly true, but many have experienced his kindness first hand whether in locating a stray goat or rounding up a wandering child. He accepts their thanks with a sad smile and rarely takes the offered meal.  
  
He spends his days on the ridge of the highest hill, stretched out on the grass in summer and standing against the wind and cold in winter, always under the boughs of an old tree which has enough stories of its own (and, if you believe in that sort of thing, holds the hopes of all Albion within it).   
  
The villagers say he talks to himself when he's up there (though some insist he's addressing the tree) and a few swear they have seen a knight standing next to him, a knight with flaming red hair and a sweeping cloak and as tall as Leon himself. They swear they see him, but when they look back he has disappeared and it is only Sir Leon standing there, alone once more.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Based on prompt - Leon/Geraint 'I know it's over' by Jeff Buckley


End file.
